Mark Cochrane on the Washington State drought

21072015

Glenda and I visited the state of Washington in the NW of the US way back in 1979. It was lush and green, much like Tasmania. Peppered with lakes and snow topped mountains, it was one of the highlights of our trip. Now read what Mark has to report following his camping holiday there just recently….

Just checking in to say that I haven’t disappeared completely. I finally bugged out on a vacation worthy of the name for the first time in 5 years and dragged my family all over the Pacific Northwest. Kudos to T2H for such excellent reporting on the plethora of news about the drought all throughout western North America. Not to mention cooking up a mean burger!

Having just driven over 10,000 km throughout the region I can attest to the extensive drought and the impacts of the all but absent snow pack from the last year. The heat wave we went through was like nothing I had previous seen in the area. From 40.5 degrees in Missoula, MT to 39 in Yakima, WA, 39+ in the Columbia River Gorge and 41 in central Oregon. Everything was crispy and primed to burn. The only upside of the heat was the lack of any wind to drive a fire. Over on the Olympic peninsula I was shocked to see all of the brown grass everywhere. Something I never saw when I lived out there. I was out to the National Park (temperate rain forest) but didn’t see the recently discovered fire that is working through those ancient forests. Lakes were low everywhere and many rivers were down. I was shocked to see that the sturgeon are now dying around the Bonneville dam and upriver as we visited it and were impressed with the fish management that they are doing.

Eastern Washington was dry but one thing that was clear is that no one is lacking for irrigation water yet. Driving across the state looks like one long fountain every day. Up on Mount Rainier I can anecdotaly say that the birds seem thirsty. They were big on robbing grapes from us and couldn’t care less about chips and such from our picnic! The Nisqually river was pathetically low for this time of year which is more a function of the lack of snow than the melting glacier. Clear blue skies in Seattle and all along the Washington and Oregon coast was appreciated but damned odd. My family now thinks that is normal but I assured them it is not.

One highlight of our trip was facilitated by Adam [from Peak Prosperity] who put us in contact with Paul and Elizabeth of Singing Frogs Farm so that we could visit them in person. If anyone hasn’t already listened to their podcast I highly recommend it (link). Everything I saw there with my own eyes bears witness to what they speak about. Add me to the list of people who hope that they will be asked to return and cover other aspects of their remarkable operation in detail. Water management being one obvious key aspect of interest. We speak about many disturbing and downright depressing topics on this thread and the PP site so it is much appreciated to have something so positive and inspiring to discuss. It is a much better model for farming.

By way of contrast we also drove across the Central Valley with its amazing array of agriculture and serious water stress issues. There was plenty of irrigation and little sign of anyone lacking water but there were no end of placards and billboards expressing the gravity of the issues for the economy and jobs. I was amazed to see new orchards of almonds still being planted at this point though since my impression was that more were being plowed under. One very scary part of the experience for me was driving through miles and miles of endless crops and never once having a single insect hit my windshield. An endless buffet but it is still an insect desert. They’ve killed everything which makes you wonder just how much pesticide is being used. Also, if bugs can’t even eat the stuff, should we?

Or maybe that Eclipse Now dude hooked him up with a prototype Boron/Hydrogen/Technohopium Gas powered Hybrid Bus for the trip?

Or he could have also hooked up with some local Eco-defence warriors along the way and sabotaged some logging/fracking machinery, maybe also cut down a billboard or two to make his trip carbon neutral? (What a fun family activity!)

I’ve actually been wondering if it’s a typo…. 10,000km is FOUR times the distance from Qld to Tasmania….. that’s a hell of a lot of driving, and I just can’t see how anyone could drive that far and STILL have a holiday!

23072015

Susmind(01:20:31) :

“We need to consider the consequences of ALL our actions.”

A new world with the top intelligent species being, extinct(perhaps not so intelligent then…) …